Drehu language

Drehu
Region	Lifou, New Caledonia
Native speakers	unknown; est. 13,000 includes many L2 speakers (2009)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic New Caledonian – Loyalties Loyalty Islands Drehu
Language codes
ISO 639-3	dhv
Glottolog	dehu1237
Drehu is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Drehu ([ɖehu]; also known as Dehu,^[2] Lifou,^[3] Lifu,^[4] qene drehu^[5]) is an Austronesian language mostly spoken on Lifou Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. It has about 12,000 fluent speakers and the status of a French regional language. This status means that pupils can take it as an optional topic for the baccalauréat in New Caledonia itself or on the French mainland.^[6] It has been also taught at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris since 1973 and at the University of New Caledonia^[7] since 2000. Like other Kanak languages, Drehu is regulated by the Académie des langues kanak, founded in 2007.

A separate register of Drehu, known as qene miny, was once used to speak to chiefs (joxu). Very few Drehu speakers know qene miny today.^[8]

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː		u uː
Mid	e eː	ø øː	o oː
Open	æ æː		ɑ ɑː

/e/ is heard as [ɛ] before nasals.

/ø/ can sometimes be [e] before nasals.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Alveopalatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasals	voiceless	m̥		n̥		ɲ̊	ŋ̊
	voiced	m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Stops and affricates	voiceless	p		t	ʈ	t͡ʃ	k
	voiced	b[a]		d	ɖ	d͡ʒ[a]	ɡ
Fricatives	voiceless	f	θ	s			x	h
	voiced	v[a]	ð	z
Approximants	voiceless	ʍ		l̥
	voiced	w		l

1. /b d͡ʒ v/ occur only in loanwords.

Writing system

Drehu was first written in the Latin script by the Polynesian^[9] and English missionaries of the London Missionary Society during the 1840s, with the help of the natives. The first complete Bible was published in 1890. The Bible writing system didn't distinguish between the dental (written "d", "t") and the alveolar/retroflex ("dr" and "tr") consonants, which for a long time were written indifferently "d" and "t". In Drehu /θ/ and /ð/ are not dental but interdental consonants. The new writing system was created during the 1970s.

Grapheme-phoneme correspondance
Grapheme	a	aa	b	c	d	dj	dr	e	ee	ë	ëë	f	g	h	hl	hm	hn	hng	hny	i	ii	j	k
Phoneme	/ɑ/	/ɑː/	/b/	/c/	/d̪/	/ɟ/	/d/	/e/	/eː/	/ɛ/	/ɛː/	/f/	/g/	/h/	/l̥/	/m̥/	/n̥/	/ŋ̊/	/ɲ̊/	/i/	/iː/	/ð/	/k/
Grapheme	l	m	n	ng	ny	o	oo	ö	öö	p	q	r	s	sh	t	th	tr	u	uu	v	w	x	z
Phoneme	/l/	/m/	/n/	/ŋ/	/ɲ/	/o/	/oː/	/ʌ/	/ʌː/	/p/	/w̥/	/r/	/s/	/ʃ/	/t/	/θ/	/t/	/u/	/uː/	/v/	/w/	/x/	/z/

^[10]

Grammar

Personal pronouns

Singular

• Eni/ni: I, me
• Eö/ö: you
• Nyipë/nyipëti: you (a polite form of address to a chief (joxu)or an older man)
• Nyipo/nyipot(i): you (a polite form of address to an older woman)
• Angeic(e): he, him, she
• Nyidrë/nyidrët(i): he, him (a polite form of address to a chief (joxu)or an older man)
• Nyidro/nyidrot(i): you (a polite form of address to an older woman)
• Ej(e): it

Dual

• Eaho/ho: we two (exclusive)
• Easho/sho (easo/so): we two (inclusive)
• Epon(i)/pon(i): you two
• Eahlo: they two
• Lue ej(e): they two for things and animals

Plural

• Eahun(i)/hun(i): we, us (exclusive)
• Eashë/shë, easë/së: we all, all of us (inclusive)
• Epun(i)/pun(i): you
• Angaatr(e): they, them
• Itre ej(e): they, them (for things and animals)

Notes

1. Drehu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. In missionary time
3. In French
4. In English
5. Qene means language (literally "qe" : mouth, "ne" : of)
6. Only five of the twenty-eight Kanak languages (in the 1999 Rapport Cerquilini or 40 according to the Académie des langues kanak) have this status: Drehu (island of Lifou), Nengone (island of Maré), A'jië (around Houaïlou), Paicî (around Poindimié) and Xârâcùù (around Canala and Thio).
7. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-10-12. Retrieved 2005-12-31.
8. As Maurice Leenhardt did ("Langues et dialectes de l'Austro-Mélanésie" (1946), the Académie considers qene miny not only as a respective register but also a distinct language
9. Most were from the Cook Islands.
10. "Kanak languages academy". Académie des Langues Kanak. Retrieved 29 May 2023.

Bibliography

• Notes Grammaticales sur la langue de Lifu (Loyaltys) (in French). Paris. 1882.
• Ray, Sidney H. (Jul–Dec 1917). "The People and Language of Lifu, Loyalty Islands". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 47. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland: 239–322. doi:10.2307/2843343. JSTOR 2843343.
• Walsh, D. T. (1967). Dehu Grammar. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• (in French) Le drehu, langue de Lifou (Iles Loyauté): phonologie, morphologie, syntaxe. ISBN 2-85297-142-9
• (in French) Maurice Lenormand, Dictionnaire de la langue de Lifou. Le Qene Drehu, 1999, Nouméa, Le Rocher-à-la-Voile, 533p
• Tryon, Darrell T. Dehu-English dictionary. C-6, vi + 142 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1967. doi:10.15144/PL-C6
• Tryon, Darrell T. English-Dehu dictionary. C-7, iv + 165 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1967. doi:10.15144/PL-C7
• Tryon, Darrell T. Dehu grammar. B-7, xii + 122 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1968. doi:10.15144/PL-B7

External links

• Read and listen to a traditional narrative in Drehu, in trilingual version Archived 2015-03-20 at the Wayback Machine (homepage of French CNRS-Lacito).
• Database of audio recordings in Drehu (Lifu) - basic Catholic prayers^{[permanent dead link]}